How does water evaporate at room temperature

In a word, when the molecule leaves, it has evaporated. The rate of evaporation can also increase with a decrease in the gas pressure around a liquid. Molecules like to move from areas of higher pressure to lower pressure.

The molecules are basically sucked into the surrounding area to even out the pressure. Once the vapor pressure of the system reaches a specific level, the rate of evaporation will slow down. Useful Reference Links. See the full list of chemistry topics at the site map! So, you can actually boil water at room temperature. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why does water evaporate at room temperature? Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 11 months ago. Active 8 months ago. Just wait, and it dries. But boiling does not usually happen naturally. We have to deliberately heat the liquid to get it to boil. Your eggs will cook just as fast either way.

On the other hand, evaporation of water will cool the water—and any surface that the water is evaporating off of. The evaporating water molecules carry away heat from your skin. This is also why you perspire on a hot, summer day. The additional moisture on your skin results in more evaporation, which cools your skin. Because at high altitudes, the air pressure is lower. Any cooks out there? I just picked up my old copy of Joy of Cooking, in which the authors include how cooking instructions must be modifi ed at high altitudes.

Remind me to do an article on that. Clothes drying on a clothesline will dry faster on a summer day than in winter. If you step out of an outdoor swimming pool when the wind is blowing, you feel colder because the wind causes the water to evaporate faster from your skin, carrying away heat energy from your skin faster, leaving your skin colder Figure 4. The wind causes that moisture to evaporate faster, carrying away more heat from your skin. Water evaporates faster when the air is dry.

When the air is dry, there are fewer water molecules in the air returning to the liquid, so the water evaporates faster. The temperature at which water in liquid form is converted into gaseous form. Then how it possible for water to evaporate at room temperature?

Think of temperature as average kinetic energy of the water molecules. While the average molecule doesn't have enough energy to break the inter-molecular bonds, a non-average molecule does. Water is a liquid because the dipole attraction between polar water molecules makes them stick together. However, at the surface of the liquid, lone molecules may end up getting enough kinetic energy to break free due to the random nature of molecular motion at basically any temperature.

On the flip side, water molecules in the atmosphere may enter the liquid at the surface as well, which is measured by equilibrium vapour pressure. Imagine spinning a roulette wheel, but instead of dropping in one ball, you drop in They all rattle around at different speeds, like the molecules in water. You can cool them down by spinning the wheel slower, so they bounce about less; heat them up by spinning faster so they bounce more; you can freeze them by stopping the wheel and waiting till they're all stationary; and you can boil them by spinning the wheel so fast that they all fly out of the top.

Now pick up all the balls and throw them back in with the wheel spinning at a moderate speed. If you watch for a while you'll see that although the average speed of the balls is below the "boiling point" where they all fly out the top, every now and again one ball will ricochet off another with enough force to send it flying out of the wheel. If you watch for long enough eventually all the balls will be gone.

Your balls just evaporated. Temperature is a measure for how much kinetic energy the molecules in a substance have. If the temperature is high, they are moving pretty fast, if the temperature is low, they are moving a lot slower. If molecules are moving slow, they bundle up and you get a solid. Once you heat it up a bit, the substance starts to become liquid.

When you heat it up even more, the molecules will start to move so fast they will spread out into the entire space gas. However, this is all averages. In a liquid all molecules are moving, some faster than others.